Migraines
The short version: No changes.
The longer version: I saw the chiropractor for 12 adjustments. We looked over both my migraine journal and the pain journal he wanted me to keep and noticed small changes. I saw them as simply changes within the margin of error, he saw them as good changes. My respect for the chiropractor, however, continued to rise as he admitted the improvements weren't enough to warrant continuing on their own. He offered to do more 'deep' adjustments but said he'd understand if I didn't want to continue any longer.
I had honestly planned on having that be our last visit, but if he has another method that might give relief I'm happy to give it a try. He even accommodated my biggest concern which was the frequent appointments when I had migraines. We reduced the visits to once a week. So, at this point I'll try another month of visits. If there aren't marked improvements, I'll call it off.
I guess I should also admit that I've talked to my friend E about my migraines and how bad they are. We've of course talked about them, but it was the first time he asked about my financial plans and how they are coming along. I admitted that I was happy as I now had a clear path to continue payments for the full 2-year length of the LTD. I also admitted that I wasn't concerned about going further than that as I don't believe I could live past that many years of this. He fought back against it, which I would certainly hope anybody would do, but he also backed off a bit when he realized I wasn't just talking out of my ass. That I'd thought through this.
And along those same lines, I'm getting closer to the "I can't stand this any more" point. I'm not suicidal. I don't want to die. I still occasionally get pleasure from things. BUT, if a doctor told me I had three months to live, I think I'd welcome it. My response would be along the lines of "Thank God, now I can make a plan."
Other Health
I don't know if I need to put another section for this or if this would go in finances, but since I don't have anything else to go in 'other health' I'll put it here. I got a letter from Social Security that they needed to talk to me.
Quick aside, I'm getting sick and tired of these time frames. The state when it comes to their disability benefits, the long term disability application/appeal/information, and the social security department all fall into this. They have fairly short time frames for me to get them information. Sometimes a week, sometimes even less. Their deadlines will often read "...if you do not get in touch with us during this time period, we will judge against your application." So, I have to rush and hurry and get it done. Meanwhile, they take days/weeks/months to get back with me. I mean, my appeal for LTD was approved in March but I STILL haven't been paid for the backpay due from December of last year. Fuckers.
Anywho, I needed to contact them quickly. When they finally called back it was to see what the visit was on February 7th. I told them that was the independent medical examiner that my long term disability sent me to. We went back and forth as he needed to know specifically who did the exam, what company he worked for and the address. He had the doctor, but not the company he worked for. He had the company, but not at that address. And he had that address, but listed it as a cardiac office. Fuck it, I don't care. I just gave him the information. IF social security approves me for disability, it's just more paperwork for me without any real benefit as it will come off the top of my LTD payments.
But it did get me to thinking... what the flying fuck? I applied for social security disability in November of last year. They're STILL looking through records and had to call and ask about an appointment I had three months after I applied. I mean... why don't you do your fucking job faster so that you don't have to keep up with appointments I have going forward. I may well see my endocrinologist, my general practitioner, and my neurologist again before they make their determination.
Finances
I not only received a receipt for the $7,500 payment, I also received a $4,000 payment and a receipt for it. It seems the $7,500 payment was for January 2nd through February 29th. The $4,000 payment was for March 1st through 31st. April, I imagine, will be paid at the end of this month.
That still, however, leaves the back pay for December 1st, through January 1st. I was trying to give them time to catch up, but that ended on Friday. I'm done waiting and will call them on Monday. I bet I'll get a "Oh, we're sending that now, you just need to be patient..." and then I'll get paid a few days later. Which will mean they forgot and my call will have reminded them. This goes along with the "hurry up and get me information/paper-work, but I get to take all the time in the world for my determination" situation. I mean, sure it's not a HUGE amount of money but that's money that could have been sitting in MY savings account and earning ME interest. Instead, MY money is sitting in THEIR account, earing THEM interest.
Fuckers.
Family/Friends
I told you above that I've talked with E. I hit he and A up about doing our annual vacation now that my LTD was settled out. If nothing else, I have the $11,000 in back pay that I can vacation on.
It's funny because we're all well traveled in our own way and we all have our own limitations when it comes to lining up vacation days.
For all of us; we traveled a LOT together for our photography business. We drove from Michigan to Wisconsin, New York, Alabama, and all points in between. Traveling, staying in hotels, visiting new cities, are all activities that we enjoy.
For me; I traveled a lot as a child for family vacations. I've hit up most of the united states, missing only Alaska, Hawaii, and several states in the Northeast. I've been to most major cities and have even hit many of them as an adult. At this point I'm most familiar with Chicago, Detroit, and Dallas. Because of my migraines, I can't fly. I had problems with big headaches from the pressure changes before the migraines were a big deal, and don't want to even see how bad it can get now. So, wherever we go, it's with me driving there. k
For E; he didn't travel as much as a kid, but he did go between northern Michigan and Arizona to visit with his grandparents before going to college. Once he got to college, he took the travel bug international. He's visited most continents, most major countries, has lived in China, Thailand, and France, and even has lived in Chicago, Raleigh, New York, and San Francisco (his current home) within America. He travels so much for work that he constantly has hotel and flight rewards and rarely has to pay for his travel and hotels during our get togethers. He's not AS unlimited as I am but he's basically free to travel for at least a long weekend, so long as we accept that he'll be spending sometime working remotely.
For A; so far as I know, he never left the greater New York City area as a kid (he grew up on Long Island, but he's a New Yorker) until he moved to go to Michigan State as a college freshman. Most of his travel has been for work, so the photo work above and later traveling for his insurance and lawyerly work. He was happy to become a Michigander like E and I were, but later moved his family down to Dallas for work and has been there for almost a decade now. His wife is a Michigander, he's a New Yorker and Michigander, and his kids are honestly more Texans than anything else. He's the most limiting as his work requires him to be in the office, so he has to take actual time off. Plus, as a family man, he takes his time off seriously as most of it is spent with his wife and children. For example, he's declared that the first few weeks of June are off because he's going to a camping experience with his daughter (I guess she's in the boy scouts and working toward an Eagle scout?).
A, E, and I all are of the same mindset. The biggest thing we want to do on vacation is to be with each other. We joke that we could get a remote cabin in the middle of Montana and have a blast spending a week there as we'd be together. That being said, we're all lovers of big cities. We're each other's way into museums as none of us have a lot of friends that enjoy going to museums. And we all get a kick out of checking off boxes of new cities visited. We've collectively covered Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Chicago, Dallas, and San Fran are the most common as they're our 'home bases'. Chicago is close to me and I can drive to it in a single morning. A lives just outside of Dallas, A lives in San Fran.
When I brought up making our vacation plans this year, we went through quite a variety of cities. E's first suggestions were Mexico City (I guess he's going to be there on business in May) or the Bahamas. I reminded him that flying wasn't an option so the Bahamas were out, but I'd be fine with driving to Mexico City. I could even stop by Dallas on the way and pick up A. My understanding is that Mexico City is HUGE, and like visiting Toronto a couple years back with E, we'd barely be able to scratch the surface. But that's fine because if we really enjoy it, we can always visit there again. Kind of like the opposite of New Orleans.... we all hated it and agree we'll never go back.
The next suggestion was Miami. I'm not opposed to Miami and it would certainly be new to me. Our family vacations never went that far south in Florida. We hit Tampa, Orlando, and Cape Canaveral. But I don't exactly like the heat or humidity, especially since we'd be visiting in late spring or early summer. But hey, Miami is a big major city and it'd be fun to knock it off the list.
While we discussed Miami, E mentioned going to "the wilds of Oklahoma". I ran with it and thought it would be fun/funny to have a vacation "in the middle of nowhere" or "no man's land". Those were once both official names for the panhandle of Oklahoma. The biggest city in the panhandle is Guymon and it has a population of about 12,000 people. There really isn't anything to do in Guymon though, so it would just be a 'hanging out' vacation and probably not worth the planning time.
Our next thought was Vancouver. I guess E was thinking about our fun in Toronto, but looking it up Vancouver is actually quite small. A population of just under 700,000 makes it just larger than Detroit. I couldn't even find good things to do outside of nature (we're collectively not 'nature' people). I moved that thought of a Canadian city to Calgary as it's much larger and has more to do. The biggest thing to do there is the big outdoor rodeo called the Calgary Stampede when they have about a million people come to visit. But... we're not rodeo people either and it's not the easiest travel for either A or E.
I kind of traced the driving path to Calgary, curious about driving that far into Canada, and realized I'd have driven right through Minneapolis and St. Paul. Neither of those cities are particularly big, but together they're bigger than Calgary. They even have some bigger museums. E nixed that idea though and instead suggested Milwaukie. Now, Milwaukie isn't nearly big enough for us but it does have some fun things like a couple good museums and the Harley Davidson museum. It even has a pretty good food scene and of course its breweries (although ironically, Grand Rapids here in Michigan is smaller than Milwaukie and has twice as many breweries!). But what could really make this a fun vacation is that it's just an hour and a half drive from Chicago.
I know, we've hit Chicago many MANY times before. But I could fill an entire long weekend just re-visiting old haunts that we all love. All the public art, hitting the old neighborhood where E and I lived, the Art Institute (one of the best art museums in American and even one of the best in the world), all the other museums.... yeah, Chicago could work. There's even something that started shortly after my last visit to Chicago called Art on the Mart. The Merchandise Mart in Chicago is a massive building that has over 4 million square feet of office space. It's so big that it has its own Zip code. Well, since it sits right on the Chicago River and stands like 25 stories tall, they'd project art on it. Here's a photo of what it looks like practically each night:
We left that there, as A was having trouble getting back with us and E and I talked about just the two of us meeting up. We talked about cities we'd like to hit and agreed we'd like something with art and/or photography (shooting photography, not viewing it) would be interesting. We came upon LA and New York. I've never experienced New York as an adult so it would certainly be fun. And New York has like 50% of the art in North America. It's the Mecca of art. LA comes in second, just above Chicago and E and I both love the art scene in Chicago. So, we've been considering a long weekend in either of those locals.
Entertainment
I'm still hating on the Apple Music app, but have to admit it runs far better than iTunes has in the past few years. I just have to accept that if I want it to change audio output when I do, I have to close it and open it again. With iTunes, that would have been a pain as it booted up slowly but Apple Music actually boots up fairly quickly. I've also realized I can have the mini player display the album art fairly large. I don't get the upcoming songs below it, but at least I get to enjoy the album art.
New Tech
Nothing really new here. The laptop worked just as good as I'd hoped it would and it will serve as a good D&D replacement for the Chromebook. No one at the D&D party wanted the Chromebook, so I'm just going to hold on to it.
Writing
Using the outline has really come in handy for It's a Man's World. Since I published the outline nine days ago, I've written six chapters. And today is feeling like a good writing day, so hopefully I'll get a few more out.
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